


The Flurrie Conundrum

by rjn



Category: Sorted (Website) RPF
Genre: Gen, Heavy Drinking, James/Mike if you'd like it to be, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 18:56:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21166433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjn/pseuds/rjn
Summary: James makes a surprising drunken admission!!(Somehow it surprises no one)But it does win a competition!!(And gives Mike something to think about)Is this summary format fun!!(Not really)





	The Flurrie Conundrum

**Author's Note:**

> why am I like this? I have real work to do.

A few drinks in, he’s his usual quiet self. Off-kilter humour and slippy pronunciation is kind of his standard state. It can be difficult to even notice the slide over the line to inebriation with James. It can take a lot of beverage, in strength and volume.

Drunk James is brilliant when he surfaces. Introspective and warmly fun. He gets extra touchy feely, not in the usual way (the guiding hand on a flank, arm slung over a shoulder, cheeky fingertips shushing lips and _boop_-ing noses). Drunk James gets his whole body into it, breathing hotly into an obliging ear, hugging indiscriminately. Even Ebbers, who alcohol-free James is careful not to crowd, is victim to a lot of distracted petting. Drunk James will do the thing that Ben tries not to smile at, where James stands up against him and rests his chin on the top of Ben’s head and takes a load off in a ridiculous show of height.

The true distinction of Drunk James, though, is how much more he allows others to touch _him_. Not just ruffling his hair or pulling his lanky frame down to a stoop for a close word. He lets Barry hang off him like a damp towel. He lets Jamie hug from behind and press against him. He doesn’t even notice when Mike kisses him, pecks at him three times in the duration of a single song. Drunk James is receptive.

They play stupid drinks games, wherein Mike is the perennial Master of Ceremonies. Because Mike has the stories, more than anyone else. He can make himself charmingly vulnerable and blaze the way for the rest to join in. Mike finds the comedy in life’s indignities and shines the right light over it, strikes the right note. His framing gets the best out of other people’s stories, if he manages it just right. His favorite person to finesse is James.

But James’ drinks admission that night is a showstopper without any prompting, which is lucky because it gobsmacks Mike before he can help rearrange the stage. The theme, muddied by this many turns passed, is something like first relationships. When everyone is picking out their worst crushes, their most aggravating early dating experiences, and confessing the worst thing they’d ever done to someone in the course of a teenage relationship, James confesses that he’d had a _boyfriend _for an _entire year_ at school and didn’t even _realize _it.

The questions they volley at him are idiotic and hilarious. _Was there kissing? Fumbling? Did he meet the boy’s parents? Did they have an adorable blended couple name?_

James whispers so softly they that have to force him to repeat it several times with rising volume until he nearly shouts it. Baz laughs so hard he starts choking and nobody thinks that’s an overreaction. The boy’s surname was Fleming! Together they were _Flurrie!_ (James: “I thought it was an adorable blended _friends_ name!”)

Allegedly, James hadn’t clued in to his betrothment until the moment he was being brutally dumped, over a cup of what he’d then thought of as decent coffee. Mike absolutely loses it at the detail of the suboptimal coffee, like poor taste in roasted blends was the absolute height of James’ ignorance at that moment.

“Why’d he break it off, then?”

James cringes, embarrassed.

“Well I was too frigid, wasn’t I?”

He says it like his audience is witless for even asking. After a pause for someone to answer on his behalf. Like it should be obvious. Kind of like it should be obvious_ when someone is your boyfriend. _The whole thing is surrealist theatre of the finest calibre. The group erupts into a laughing riot that earns reproachful looks from the other corners of the pub.

“A good thing, that,” says Jamie. “Imagine poor Fleming trying to slip it in.”

“Wham. Karate chopped!” supplies Barry.

The best bit of the story, the _nonstop thrill ride_ of a story, is the recounting of a brief windfall era for James of uncanny success with girls in his school. Their willingness to “experiment” with him with no expectation of commitment or even reciprocal effort. A string of driven young women who, James later came to understand, had been trying to _turn_ him.

It’s too much. None of them will ever recover from this. Poor Barry is practically on the floor delirious and he’s hardly had anything to drink. The hysteria leaves everyone in a state of amused disbelief, thoroughly entertained except for Ben, who almost seems miffed. Mike thinks its because Ebbers would have killed for something like that in school, something so discreet that only half of the couple in question even knew of its existence. A thing that ephemeral and simultaneously profound was classically teenaged at least in that regard.

And it’s such a _James _thing, against the fraught backdrop of puberty, to plainly say that he loves someone, like it’s obvious, like it’s a fact of nature, and not to give enough consideration for what that kind of admission from someone like him does to the other person. It must be an appealing concept for Ebbers, looking back at his own struggle. An entire romantic relationship nurtured without awkward teenage posturing would have been bliss. What a gift would be James’ utter lack of awareness, an inadvertent refusal to bow to the blunt force of adolescent homophobia.

Mike thinks of the sometimes painful wanting that had been plain in Ben, and wishes, not for the first time, that James could have been around since the very beginning. Had been in their group and helped them bolster the first glimmer of what would eventually become Ben’s gleaming poise. Had eased those tricky coming out stages with his imperturbable devotion. James could have been a rock for all of them. Mike knows nobody starts out as steadfast and self-assured as they are in adulthood, but somehow, he could see that for a teenaged James.

Mike catches a familiar look that passes between the chefs; James checking for Ben’s approval. With a head shake and a casual drink from his glass, Ben says it’s all okay without a word exchanged. The butt of the joke is clearly James’ obliviousness. Fleming The Presumptuous, by growing bored of James’ chaste companionship and by ending it with the mature sophistication of a coffee shop ditching, is a legend.

“So I win?” asks James, as if anyone else had come close in this oddly wholesome round of _Drunks Tales (Ooo-woo-ooo)_. He receives nods of concession all around, with a few disproving head shakes thrown in for good measure. “The drinks,” he says, in a slushy way that suggests they are not needed. “Bring them to me.”

Jamie and Baz Google up the specifications for a cocktail called a _Flurry (sic)_ and force everyone to drink the vile concoction in honour of James and his too-subtle Ex. They gradually return to equilibrium in their group mind, where James is perpetually exasperated and sweetly flustered but mostly probably straight.

It sticks with Mike, though. Somehow the concept of James’ accidental boyfriend is not as unimaginable as it should be. James has an easy fluidity where he can be exactly what the people around him want him to be. He cares about the citizens of his closest circles with an intimacy that could confuse an adult companion of James’ now, let alone a hormonal teenager faced with a gawky and earnest-hearted adolescent James.

Mike confronts him gently on the shared cab ride.

“That story can’t possibly be true.”

“Which story?”

James voice creaks, tired and dazed, and as if Mike could be referring to anything else.

“Your boyfriend. And you being an oblivious twat.”

“Oh. No, it’s true, sadly.” He sighs. “I must have been _such_ a terrible boyfriend.”

Mike knows how wrong that is. James would have made an excellent boyfriend by most measures on the warmth of his friendship alone. It wouldn’t take much twisting, not in the wistful light of a teenage imagination. Mike is struck by a sudden curiosity, a desire to see photos of what James had looked like then. He’s seen exactly one early picture of James, and it was only as far back as Uni; essentially the same beardless, plucked-chicken-pale edition of James that had offered a very stiff handshake when introduced to Mike all those years ago.

James shifts beside him, trying to get comfortable. He is more drunk than anyone had realized until they had all fallen out onto the street, hence the cab and the activation of the buddy system. Mike shakes his head, scoffs sarcastically at what a lightweight his assigned buddy is (anyone else but James would be dead by this point and without need of embalming). In response to the criticism, James turtles himself slightly into the collar of his coat and closes his eyes. Mike pulls him across the seat so that he can rest his head on the soft plane of Mike’s upper arm instead of the car window. Lights stroke over the side of James’ face as they cruise along the road. He doesn’t move.

“We’re married, by the way,” Mike tells James, when he is certain the man is mostly asleep and beyond comprehension. “It’s been three years and we have adopted a child together. In case all of that has escaped your notice.”

After a moment’s more contemplation, thoroughly amused by his own invention, he adds an extra detail.

“We named him Alastair. But my father overcame his disappointment.”

James doesn’t react, just breathes heavily and slightly wetly, like he’ll have a good post-drunk snore going later. Mike realizes he probably shouldn’t leave him alone in this state, considers that he might need a wheelbarrow to get James home properly. It’s full minutes before James’ head turns, his chin emerges from his coat and his mouth moves against Mike’s neck.

“Cuttlestone?” he murmurs. “Or Hurrie?”


End file.
